Fresh & Easy

This store is closing, probably due to its small selection of items, and when items were on sale because the store was closing, they were still overpriced.

Store closing signs were posted last week. This is a fare-​well review to the neighborhood market that I have grown to love. I am sorry that it didn’t work out. :-(

This place is horrible and the workers are disrespectful. I waited 15 minutes for the doors to open because it said «temporary closed… Will open in 45 minutes» customers don’t know how long that 45 was up.

Weird & Creepy is a more likely name for this place. The newspaper said that this is an experiment for an English company trying to streamline things. It’s streamlined alright. Everything, including fruit and vegetables is priced sorta by the serving (I.e. One Apple has a price sticker, you can’t buy by the pound) so you can’t tell the fairness of the price easily.
The selection is poor despite being a large store and you have to check yourself out which is ok when it’s a small purchase but grows increasingly tiresome for larger visits.
The store has an odd feel to it, I can’t place it but it creeps me out. I’ve shopped at the two prior supermarkets at this location and they felt fine. Go figure.
When in a rush it’s the only supermarket in our neighborhood so you can get something to eat, but it might not be what you had in mind.
I’d love to report on the prices but they don’t carry my brands nor do they sell by the pound so I can’t tell. I also find that the produce goes bad very quickly so I suspect it’s not very fresh.

Here’s my preference by F & E location:
1. San Jose
2. Mountain View
3. Sunnyvale
If you can, choose to shop at one of the top two before choosing the third.
Cool:
— F & E brand rocks my socks. I love their tomato sauces! Also salsas!
— A whole ton of healthy snacks and other product finds that you may not be able to get elsewhere. (Only they and Whole Foods carry my beloved Halo Top Ice Cream.) Also, they have some teas I have never seen elsewhere.
Not cool dude, not cool:
— Price — But in regards to this location, dang, these prices are kind of high. I was surprised that Chobani yogurt was priced at over $ 6. Although it is elsewhere, F & E usually tends to be more reasonable.
— Out of stock — Also, they were out of a number of items including a few of their tomato sauces.
— Small bakery — This bakery section is almost tiny. The selection for a number of items here was more limited.
So if you can head to one of the other locations, choose those. If not and you need your F & E fix, this one will do.

I am planning a wedding on a show string budget so I was very happy the big Kahuna sweet white was only .99 cents until early October. So there was none in stock asked someone they said will be coming in tomorrow. So the next 3 weeks myself and husband went in looking for the wine, same thing coming soon. Then spoke to the manager he took my phone number said he will call me when they come in. Then the sign was gone spoke to manager of ordering he said they can’t get them in stock. Called the headquarters 3 times with no call back. The headquarters had no intention of calling me back. If I knew how to put a picture up of the sign I would. Just a phone call would of been nice.

I was thrilled to discover that this Fresh & Easy was within walking distance to my apartment. This store has tons of perks:
— Open 24-​hours
— EV chargers
— Plenty of parking
— Self-​check out with helpful attendants
— A variety of organic and healthy produce
— Delicious to-​go (prepare food) section
— Clean and convenient
All I need to do is figure out when things go on sale, so I don’t miss out on the discounted items. It’s like a rat race in there! Things go out of stock quickly if you don’t come at the right time.
I wish it had a hot bar, a coffee bar, and seating options. It’s really inconvenient going to Peet’s Coffee next door to eat…

First they no longer sell the good burritos in the clear plastic wrap, I loved those. This past Saturday I come in and an employee is putting out some trail mix in little cups. That is a great idea I thought until I saw they were doing it with their bare hands? Yuck you pouring nuts and seeds into your hand, that I’m going to put in my mouth? No I don’t think so! Makes we wonder are employees even trained anymore? Plastic gloves a lil spoon goes a long way. You’d think a person would already know this.

I’ve been to this location a couple times before work and I enjoyed my experience both times. All aisles were pretty well stocked and the staff was friendly. I especially loved the variety of beverages, some of them I’ve never seen in other stores. This will give me a reason to come back to Fresh & Easy so I can try other beverages.

Great Location.
Parking Lot Not Big Enough.
I visit often before I head to work.
Hard time finding parking during lunch of course.
Store has a lot of different items.
I like to come to get a healthy microwavable meal. Aways a lot to chose from. Great Fruit and Pastries. The Staff there is always very Kind & Helpful!(:

It is fresh and easy.
This is the place to get good vegetables, fruits and good french cheese.

When shopping here, I regularly see;
1. Beef so bad it has grown green
2. Vegetables that look like they belong next to a dumpster outside a failing restaurant (example image of ‘fresh’ green peppers attached)
Add abysmal service and serve for the worst grocery store in the entire area.

I have a Fresh & Easy closer to my house, but a quick stop at the nearby Bank of the West allowed me the chance to check out a different Fresh & Easy location.
This store is also 24 hours, and they carry the same products as the one on First Street. The store is clean and there are plenty of store attendants. Not everything was too well-​stocked in the ice cream aisle, but they did have a lot more cookies than my regular one.
Overall, a good alternative if I’m ever in the area.

I came in because I had forgotten my lunch. I just needed some quick food for the day. And when I got in there were right in front refrigerators of exactly what I needed. They had sandwiches soups salads and a few other little lunch items to go.
Then what I needed next was just some bread so I went back to the bakery and to be honest the bakery didn’t really have that much and it was kind of odd because you could not see the bakery like most places it was just kind of all closed off like a regular grocery store. And the selection to me I thought was pretty slim.
Overall the stores very clean the workers are hopeful and it has basically everything that you need. The prices are comparable two other grocery stores and in some cases lower.
I don’t think I’ll be going back to this fresh and easy just because it’s not in my neighborhood, but I will probably go back to another one.

Contrary to what others have complained about, my customer service at fresh&easy was amazing — one of the greatest in a grocery store, actually.
I came in at 2am, hungry after a long day of work. One of the store clerks saw me looking around and asked if I needed anything! (This rarely happened to me at Safeway, Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods). (1)
Someone else I asked to find an item helped me right away. (2)
At the self-​checkout, another store cashier helped me bag part of my groceries. It’s a *self*-checkout, yet I was helped! (3)
The same guy offered to help me with my bags! I’m a guy, could carry them just fine (only had three bags). (4)
What else do you want people?! A concierge service?
Anyway.
Besides the great customer service (at least during the night shift), here are some other pros:
* discounted items (25%) after 4pm if the expire the next day
* deeper discounts (70%) if the item expires the same day (come shortly after midnight)
* best price in a brick-​and-​mortar store for the best protein bars around (CLIF Builder) — $ 1.49, as low as Trader Joe’s. Safeway and Whole Foods are more expensive.
* many unique products you won’t find at Trader Joe’s. I especially love their shrimp ceviche and stuffed pesto mushroom!

I agree with the sentiment on customer service — rude and unhappy employees make for a bitter shopping experience for the consumer. I was fine accepting this in the name of convenience until my most recent seafood purchase. Today is the 11^th. I bought a salmon filet dated by the store as fresh for consumption or freezing until the 17^th. I cooked it the day of purchase. It looked completely normal all along and then fell to complete mush upon contact. Gross.
I adore salmon. I average a serving every other day, every day on some weeks. I’ve cooked it in every way possible over a period of years; it’s my favorite.
It sucks to toss a perishable food you just paid for and prepared. Although I’ve heard people say «Fresh and Sleazy,» I’d flip it — this place is true to the Easy part, but staying Fresh is apparently a challenge… and unfortunately for them, a key part of keeping customers satisfied.

One of the best things about this location is that it is open 24 hours!
Come after ~5pm because that’s when they start marking down their produce and meats.
Come after midnight for the BEST deals on pre-​packaged foods.
The have to get rid of their daily supplies, so they incrementally mark down prices as the day goes on :)
Prices in general are comparable to any other grocery store. Maybe a bit marked up, but they have a lot of sale/​clearance items floating around.

Update: the chain was sold by Tesco a few months ago to private investors, and things have changed for the worse fairly quickly.
Strike 1: What Ammie A. writes about the $ 5 off $ 25 coupons is no longer true. Ever since the acquisition closed, these coupons, as well as other $ 10 off $ 50 coupons for email subscribers, have disappeared. Previously, F&E offered in-​house coupons to compensate for not accepting manufacturer’s coupons, and because much of its offerings are in-​house. Yet while F&E has eliminated its in-​house coupons, it hasn’t started accepting manufacturer’s coupons, nor has it lowered prices on in-​house items.
Strike 2: Worse yet, prices on many items I usually get have actually gone up, as much as 10%. Combined with strike 1, that’s a double whammy! What was once a $ 40 grocery bill is now $ 55, a 38% increase.
Strike 3: Certain items have disappeared or been replaced by other items that are smaller in size and inferior in quality. Yet another stealth price increase.
The employees at this Sunnyvale outlet have always been super sweet and friendly, and have recognized me as a regular. What really sealed the deal, though, was a wide array of convenient products at decent prices. This is no longer the case. Judging by an endless stream of complaints you’re receiving on your Facebook page — and leaving unaddressed, something you never did under Tesco — I’d have to say many people agree, and are also now *former* customers.
Three strikes and you’re out, F&E. From my personal experience as a former investment banker, many PE investors, such as F&E’s new owners, go by the «How to Lose Friends and Alienate People» playbook and squeeze as much profits as possible out of the business instead of actually growing it. Starvation, rather than growth, is rarely a good strategy especially when the PE investor’s goal is to sell the business to somebody else or via an IPO in several years.
In the world of supermarkets, which comes close to perfect competition in an Economics 101 sense, as a customer, I’ll be going out of my way to pursue better, more cost– and value-​competitive choices at places like Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods instead.

F&E, you sure know how to keep a guy coming back for more. I mean, I just met you five days ago in San Jose, and already we’re rendezvousing in my hometown of Sunnyvale. I can’t get enough. I just gotta have your sweet, juicy melons.
And still at $ 1.75 apiece, those watermelons are a hard deal to resist for anybody. Sprouts can’t touch this!
And nothing like a large selection of $ 2 bottles of Big Kahuna wine to help set the mood. And that $ 1.99/lb chicken breast? Mmm, that would look great on my grill.
But come on F&E, how about a larger selection of fruits and vegetables? If you call yourself «Fresh», then you’d better be like the cab with the license plate that says «Fresh». More than one aisle of fruits and veggies would be a good start. Sure I can find the typical stuff, but what if I wanted something (slightly but not really) more uncommon like mangoes, pineapples, green onions or squash, to name just a few? No dice (in the mirror).
But those watermelons… dang they make me weak in the knees. It’s too bad that no one grocery store has a great selection and great deals on everything. So you can expect to save some green on some things here, but Sprouts, Trader Joe’s, Felipe’s and Costco still have their place.

Fresh & Easy is my go-​to grocery store… no matter what city I’m in. I love their selection of fresh and reasonably priced veggies, meats, and most things I’ve tried in their store brand.
Recent favorites include… The cilantro lemon hummus with pita chips… EVERYONE loves it. Their stuffed salmon and sushimi are also very good. The liquid center molten lava cake and chocolate soufflé are both extremely delicious… However, they are almost equal in taste (the lava has a denser texture) so since the molten lava cake has way more calories and more more fat, I would say go with the chocolate soufflé. Haha — I could go on and on.
They have a great clearance fridge section!
They offer family and hybrid parking!
Open 8am-​10pm, everyday!
Excellent customer service.
And their staff is friendly and helpful.
I recommend Fresh & Easy to all of my friends and tell them to keep an eye out for coupons, too.
Definitely see ya there!